At Amherst College in the late 1940s, freshmen roommates Jonathan and Sandy develop a friendly rivalry over their attempts at "scoring" on their dates with female coeds. The sexually aggressive Jonathan wants to be "smothered and mothered" by large breasts, while shy, romantic Sandy claims to value intelligence and sincerity. At a college party, Jonathan spots Smith College student Susan and, after summarily dismissing her breast size, encourages Sandy to approach her. Sandy's initial clumsy attempt leads to several dates with the intellectual and humorous Susan, which he then reports in detail to Jonathan. After Jonathan pushes him to "feel her up," Sandy persists in trying to touch Susan's breasts on a subsequent date, but Susan claims that she is not sexually attracted to him. Desperate, Sandy admits that she is the first girl that he has ever tried to touch in that way. Feeling sorry for Sandy, Susan allows him to touch her while she puts her hand on his penis. After Jonathan learns that Susan is more promiscuous than he had previously thought, he asks Susan to go out with him. While neither Jonathan nor Susan tells Sandy about the resulting romance, Sandy continues to tell Jonathan about his dates with Susan, claiming that he has fallen in love because she appreciates his sensitivity and intellect. On his next date with Susan, Jonathan, jealous that Susan likes Sandy more than him, tries to win her sympathy by fabricating a story about his humble childhood which led him to want to become a socially conscious lawyer. Several dates later, Jonathan's ploy pays off and Susan agrees to have sex, but does not enjoy the act. Jonathan describes his dates with Susan to Sandy, but calls her “Myrtle” to keep their betrayal a secret. When Sandy learns that Jonathan has lost his virginity with “Myrtle,” he tries to have sex with Susan, who at first refuses but finally relents. Months later, Sandy confesses to Jonathan that he is jealous of the fact that Jonathan lost his virginity before him and continues to have more adventuresome sex than he does. One night, when the three friends go out together, Susan dances with both men, enjoying Jonathan's suave demeanor and easy footwork more than Sandy's awkward attempts at intimacy on the dance floor. Later, Jonathan, angry that Susan has told Sandy that she feels so close to him she can read his thoughts, demands that Susan choose between the two men. When they both agree to break the affair soon after, Susan suggests that they can still be friends, but Jonathan coolly remarks, "I hope not." Days later in Sandy and Jonathan’s dormitory room, Susan and Sandy playfully argue like a married couple over packing for a camping trip while Jonathan sullenly watches. Over ten years later, the two friends meet and discuss their lives. Jonathan, who is now a taxman, is still the consummate playboy and complains that assertive women are gold-digging castrators and claims that he wants to settle down with someone “if their figure is good enough.” Meanwhile Sandy, who has married Susan and started a family, is bored with their suburban life and jealous of Jonathan's sexual freedom. Soon after, Jonathan begins dating television model Bobbie, whose revealing clothing displays her voluptuous figure. After several weeks of dating and passionate lovemaking with Jonathan, Bobbie suggests they move in together, but Jonathan rejects the proposal, suggesting that it will ruin their sex. Soon after, Jonathan confesses to Sandy that he was experiencing moments of impotence but has been cured by his attraction to Bobbie's figure. After Bobbie moves in with him, Jonathan insists that she quit her job, promising to provide for her. Bobbie concedes in hopes of marrying Jonathan and having children, but he continues to adamantly resist to the idea. At home with nothing to do, Bobbie becomes increasingly depressed, rarely leaving her bed and barely capable of warming television dinners for Jonathan. Lacking in any tenderness, Jonathan constantly berates and humiliates Bobbie, causing her to weep in despair. After Jonathan rages at Bobbie for having a more "checkered" sexual past than him and orders her to do something useful like housework, a desperate and sobbing Bobbie states that she cannot stand her life. One night, when Sandy and his sophisticated mistress, Cindy, are at Jonathan’s apartment to pick them up for a party, Jonathan tells Sandy that Bobbie is too passive, while Sandy claims Cindy dominates him in the bedroom. After Jonathan urges Sandy to swap partners for the night, Sandy agrees and goes to the bedroom to find Bobbie. Jonathan then dances with Cindy, who refuses his advances, confidently explaining that she will sleep with him but only on her terms. When Cindy leaves after ordering Jonathan to tell Sandy that he should not bother returning home if he sleeps with Bobbie, Jonathan opens the bedroom door to find Bobbie passed out from an overdose and Sandy calling an ambulance. Even as he witnesses Bobbie's despair, Jonathan can only yell at the unconscious woman that their relationship is "not going to work out." In the 1970s, twenty years since their college days, the now jaded middle-aged friends are still far from understanding love in a committed relationship. Wealthy Jonathan complains about his alimony payments to his now ex-wife Bobbie and their child, while Sandy, desperate to recapture his youth, dates demure eighteen-year-old Jennifer, dresses in hippie attire and espouses the “free love” of the new generation. When Sandy and Jennifer visit Jonathan, he presents a slide show of all his past lovers, including a picture of Susan which he attempts to ignore, referring to them all as "frigid ballbusters,” and paints increasingly degrading verbal portraits of each woman, upsetting Sandy and Jennifer. Later, Jonathan confesses to Sandy that he has only glimpsed the illusive nature of love through brief sexual encounters, while Sandy laments that when he finally falls in love with a woman and makes a commitment, his sexual interest in them dies. With his impotence increasing, Jonathan seeks out prostitute Louise, who obliges Jonathan's obsessive request that she perform a verbal ritual worshipping men's "virile" and "domineering" behavior and castigating women as manipulative and castrating. When Louise veers slightly from the script, an enraged Jonathan, whose libido has immediately faltered, demands that she repeat the lines verbatim to ensure his satisfaction.


Carnal Knowledge (1971)
D. Mike Nichols

Moviegoers expecting to be titillated were taken aback by this drama's raw, taboo-breaking examination of misogyny and dysfunctional relationships.

The prurient title of this raw, profanity-laden, taboo-breaking Mike Nichols film (with a script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer), meaning 'sexual intercourse,' brought millions of patrons into the theatres for its character-based tale of the exploits and sexual encounters of two Amherst college roommates: shy and naive Sandy (singer Art Garfunkel) and narcissistic, predatory womanizer Jonathan (Jack Nicholson).

This striking film with adult subject matter told of their dysfunctional, misogynistic sexual attitudes and 'machismo' relationships (and breakups) with women over a 20-year period (from the late-1940s to the late 60s). It illustrated their fragile male egos and bravado, as it further pushed the boundaries of sex in cinema and challenged the ratings system and the general morals of the time - although the film had little in the way of explicit sex.

A film print was seized by Albany, Georgia officials in 1972, claiming that it violated obscenity laws, and the manager of the film theatre was arrested (and convicted, but it was later overturned). It was brought as a major case before the US Supreme Court, which found in 1974 that the film was not obscene and "did not depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way." The court ruled that a local Georgia law prohibiting the distribution of the "obscene" material had gone too far. Nowadays, the film would be considered tame, with its minor amount of nudity or explicit sexual activity, although its dialogue was ripe, candidly frank and open for its time.

It began with the two males' difficult initiation into sex ("scoring" with coeds) during their 1940s student days at Amherst (with among others, Candice Bergen as the pretty, respectable and intelligent Smith College student Susan whom they both dated). Sandy awkwardly tried to feel Susan's breasts through her clothes during a date, details of which he later shared with Jonathan. In the meantime, Jonathan betrayed his friend and dated Susan ("Myrtle") and she lost her virginity to him, unbeknownst to Sandy, although eventually Sandy married Susan and had a family in a typical surburban setting.

The story continued with playboyish Jonathan's later difficult relationship to voluptuous, big-breasted TV model Bobbie (Oscar-nominated Ann-Margret) who he first felt was his sexual salvation - and she soon became his live-in mistress: ("I took one look at the tits on her, and I knew I'd never have trouble again"). Jonathan soon resented Bobbie's hints at becoming more domestic and trapped-hitched, as she vulnerably drowned in depressing despair. He then berated and insulted her ("Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?"). When she cried out and pleaded: "I want you!", he answered: "I'm taken --- by me!" He added: "For God's sake, I'd almost marry you if you'd leave me."

In a revealing close-up, a naked Bobbie sat up against a blank wall (filmed from the chest up), lost in her own thoughts of depression and suicide, and soon after took an overdose of pills. The film then followed Jonathan into his divorced, burnt-out life in the late 60s and 70s, when he looked back and called ex-wife Bobbie "Queen of the Ballbusters." Meanwhile, Sandy was dating 18 year-old free-love advocate and hippie chick Jennifer (Carol Kane) in the late 60s.

Finding himself dysfunctionally impotent, Jonathan resorted to using the pleasuring services of paid prostitute Louise (Rita Moreno in a cameo) to massage his ego (and more) in the film's final scene. Obsessively, he had her recite a carefully-worded script (he yelled at her - "God-damn it! You're doing it all wrong" - when she deviated) while she kneeled between his legs. After accepting payment of $100, and as he reclined back on a couch, she reassured him as she stroked his thighs: "I don't think we're gonna have any trouble tonight." She called him "a real man, a kind man" and then went on to encourage him to rise up and be manly:

I don't mean the weak kind the way so many men are. I mean the kindness that comes from enormous strength, from an inner power so strong that every act, no matter what, is more proof of that power. That's what all women resent. That's why they try to cut ya down, because your knowledge of yourself and them is so right, so true, that it exposes the lies by which they, every scheming one of them, live by. It takes a true woman to understand that the purest form of love is to love a man who denies himself to her - a man who inspires worship, because he has no need for any woman, because he has himself. And who is better, more beautiful, more powerful, more perfect... you're getting hard... more strong, more masculine, extraordinary, more... bust. It's rising, it's rising... more virile, domineering, more irresistible. It's up - in the air...